# Meta's new terms and the news: what changed in v1.2.0, sgit.ai > The changes to the article "Meta's new terms and the news" in v1.2.0, paragraph by paragraph. *Source: · sgit.ai v0.7.87 · this file is generated from the same content as the page, so the two cannot drift. Every page on this site has a `.md` twin; internal links below point at them.* --- [Home](../../../index.md) / [Articles](../../index.md) / [Meta's new terms and the news](../../meta-terms-and-the-news.md) / [Versions](../meta-terms-and-the-news.md) / v1.2.0 # Meta's new terms and the news: what changed in v1.2.0 From v1.1.0 (2026-10-27, `019ddf902`) to v1.2.0 (2026-10-27, `4cb930e25`), paragraph by paragraph. **Prompted by review.** This version answers Claude Fable (Anthropic)’s review of the text published in newsroom v0.13.104 (9 findings fixed). 7 paragraphs added, 2 removed, 9 changed in place, 55 unchanged. About 468 words added and 94 removed. Insertions are marked like this, deletions like this; unchanged runs are folded to one line; figures appear as their file names. [← v1.1.0](v1.1.0.md) · [all versions](../meta-terms-and-the-news.md) · [v1.3.0 →](v1.3.0.md) # Meta's new terms and the news: what the crawling clause says, what has happened insincefive weeks,mid-October, and why publishers should answer with their own machine-readable terms, not only with letters 12 unchanged paragraphs, under In short {#in-short}, What Tami Hoffman is pointing at {#post} Tami Hoffman, Director of Public Policy at The Guardian, posted on LinkedIn on 27 October: "This ⬇️ is filling up my inbox. Meta's decision to update its 'commercial terms of use' has got news organisations around the world riled. 90 seconds of your time and I will explain why." The video puts the clause on screen, word by word, and shows Meta's page with the clause highlighted inside the section where a business grants Meta its licences. It is a good way to see it, because the clause is one paragraph among many that most businesses acceptaccept, often without reading. 11 unchanged paragraphs, under The clause, part by part {#clause} There is a fair reading of part of this. An ad platform checks the pages its ads link to, for safety and for quality, and that needs a crawler. Meta's spokesperson Andy Stone said the crawling terms apply"only"onlyapplied to our ads and business products", that this "is not about scraping news sites", and that robots.txt preferences still count. The problem is that none of those limits is in the text. "Business products" is not defined,defined: the examples that follow it are illustrative, not limiting, and, as WAN-IFRA put it, Meta's robots.txt assurances are not in the terms. ## FiveSinceweeks of itmid-October {#timeline} !shot mt-timeline.webp | images/ | Meta's Commercial Terms, October to November 2026: the update with "train", effective 30 October; the News/Media Alliance's "outrageous and probably illegal" on 16 October; Meta removing "train" on 16 and 17 October; the News Media Association's "shameless landgrab" on 19 October; an open letters andletter, complaints for interim measures on 22 October;and WAN-IFRA's five demands andon 22 October; Meta's move to 20 November on 23 October;and "a pause,pause not a solution" on 2623 October; and the terms in force on 20 November. | chart 5 unchanged paragraphs • **23 October:** WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers, wrote to Meta's Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan, with five demands. The same day, Meta moved the date to 20 November. The European Commission said it "welcomes Meta's announcement that it has postponed the entry into force of its new commercial terms". WAN-IFRA's CEO, Stig Ørskov: "This postponement is a welcome step, but it does not address our concerns." • **26 October:** the News Media Association: "This delay is welcome, but it is a pause, not a solution." • **22 October:** WAN-IFRA, the World Association of News Publishers, wrote to Meta's Chief Global Affairs Officer, Joel Kaplan, with five demands; the letter is dated 22 October and was reported the next day. • **23 October:** Meta moved the date to 20 November. The European Commission said it "welcomes Meta's announcement that it has postponed the entry into force of its new commercial terms". WAN-IFRA's CEO, Stig Ørskov: "This postponement is a welcome step, but it does not address our concerns." • **23 October:** the News Media Association's Theo Bamber: "This delay is welcome, but it is a pause not a solution." 3 unchanged paragraphs, under What publishers are asking for {#asks} All five are reasonable. FourTwo of themthem, binding robots.txt and leaving news sites alone, ask Meta to write into the contract what Meta has already sayssaid in public.public; the other three ask for more than Meta has offered. That is the gap: a platform's statement is not a term, and a term the other side cannot negotiate is not an agreement. 5 unchanged paragraphs, under My view: do not only write letters {#view} • **A price per crawl.** Cloudflare's [pay per crawl](https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-pay-per-crawl/), launchedannounced as a private beta in July 2025, answers an AI crawler with HTTP 402, Payment Required, and a price. It is enforcement at the edge, independent of anyone's terms of service. 5 unchanged paragraphs, under How a crawler can behave {#crawler} !shot mt-crawler.webp | images/ | How a crawler can behave, from the PHP story site's source watch: public sources only; each site's terms and robots.txt followed; three licence tiers, set per publisher, A keep and show (73(74pages),publishers), B at most 25 words and a link (523),(933), C link only (15),(16),asinrecordedtheonsource23watch's export of 27 October; captures private, hashes public; and an opt-out for any publisher who asks. | chart We crawl too. The [PHP story site](https://php.oct.2026.newsroom.sgit.ai/) has a researcher agent that watches 1,330about 1,365 pages from public sources,sources (in its export of 27 October), and its rules are written down: public sources only; each site's terms and robots.txt followed; every pagepublisher given a licence tier, A for open and public-sector publishers whose pages we may keep and show, B for pagesthose we may quote in at most 25 words with a link, C for link only; the captures kept privately, with only their hashes published; and, in [the design for a shared research site](https://newsroom.sgit.ai/articles/one-researcher-for-every-newsroom.html), an opt-out for any publisher who asks us to stop. 12 unchanged paragraphs, under What to watch before 20 November {#watch}, What this does not claim {#limits} ## Reviewed, and corrected {#review} The editor asked for a fresh review of this article on the day it was published. Claude Fable, not the model that wrote it, checked it against Meta's pages, the publishers' statements, WAN-IFRA's letter and our own source watch, and asked for changes. It was right on all nine points, and they are fixed: 1. **Our own crawler's numbers were wrong.** The licence tiers are set per publisher, and the source watch's export of 27 October gives 74 at A, 933 at B and 16 at C, of about 1,365 pages; the counts and the date we had matched no record. 2. **WAN-IFRA's letter is dated 22 October,** not 23 October; it was reported the next day. 3. **The News Media Association's "pause not a solution" was on 23 October,** not 26 October. 4. **Andy Stone's words** are that the crawling terms "only applied to our ads and business products"; we had paraphrased them inside quotation marks. 5. **"Four of the five demands" was overstated.** Meta's public statements match two: robots.txt, and leaving news sites alone. 6. **"Five weeks" was wrong** for something that started in mid-October. The dispute is eleven days old; the terms take effect five weeks after it started. 7. **"Business products" has examples after it.** The point is that they are illustrative, not limiting. 8. **Cloudflare's pay per crawl was announced as a private beta,** not launched, in July 2025. 9. **"Most businesses accept without reading"** was an absolute without a count; now "often". It also checked and found sound the quotes of Tami Hoffman's post and of the clause against the screenshots, Meta's 20 November date and its "if you do not agree" sentence, the quotes from the News/Media Alliance, the NMA, WAN-IFRA and the European Commission with their dates, and RSL 1.0. The review and the answer to every finding are at the end of this page. 2 unchanged paragraphs, under Where this comes from {#sources} [← v1.1.0](v1.1.0.md) · [all versions](../meta-terms-and-the-news.md) · [v1.3.0 →](v1.3.0.md) --- *[Site index for agents](../../../llms.txt) · [HTML version](https://newsroom.sgit.ai/articles/versions/meta-terms-and-the-news/v1.2.0.html)*